1,400 New Apartments For Ramat Shlomo

The Yerushalayim Planning and Building Committee has discussed a new plan to construct 1,400 new apartments in the chareidi Ramat Shlomo neighborhood on 17.5 acres of land. This is an expansion of an earlier plan to build five hundred apartments which was frozen under the Obama administration and is now being sprung out of the cold in a spirit of jubilance at the Trump victory.

“Yerushalayim is acting as if Trump was already president, but the issue is no one knows what his policies will be,” committee sources admitted. “There’s a feeling that whatever isn’t accomplished in the next two months won’t necessarily succeed later on. Even if America condemns us, it’s not worth too much right now. We need to tell Trump very clearly that Yerushalayim intends to build.”

Plans have also been announced to build 2,600 units in Givat Hamatos and 3,000 in Gilo. Both these neighborhoods are over the Green Line.

Nachman Shai of Zionist Union warned that the frenzy was an invitation for Palestinian anger and international pressure.

At the same time, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman angered the right-wing by saying that Israel should reach an agreement with the incoming U.S. administration to have a free hand inside existing West Bank blocs where eighty percent of the West Bank Jews live, but agree to freeze all construction in outlying areas including his own West Bank settlement of Nokdim. Lieberman noted that in 2004, President George W. Bush acknowledged to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a letter that the main West Bank blocs would be retained by Israel in any future peace deal.

Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni endorsed Lieberman’s comment, writing on Twitter that “Israel must enshrine through the Americans the commitment I worked to get from Bush, against the right of return [for Palestinians to Israel and the West Bank] and for preserving the blocs.”

Lieberman repeated his warning that politicians should stop making wild statements about Trump’s future policies regarding Israel, which “undoubtedly hurts” the country’s position. Much depends upon whom he would appoint to key political posts, he said.